Peter Rippon, the editor of Newsnight, is said to have played down the
importance of an investigation into Jimmy Savile's alleged child abuse,
saying the victims were "teenagers, not too young", according to a
leaked email written by one of his staff.

Peter Rippon faces yet more questions as a result of the leaked emailPhoto: REX

By Gordon Rayner and Rosa Prince

3:53PM BST 23 Oct 2012

Liz MacKean, the reporter who put together Newsnight's investigation into Jimmy Savile after his death last year, told a friend that Mr Rippon said allegedly said Savile's crimes "weren't the worst kind of sexual offences".

The email, obtained by Channel 4 News, is one of several written by Ms MacKean at the time of the investigation which were censored by BBC lawyers overseeing last night's Panorama investigation into the fiasco.

In the email, written last December, Ms MacKean claims: "Having commissioned the story, Peter Rippon keeps saying he's lukewarm about it and is trying to kill it by making impossible editorial demands.

"When we rebut his points, he resorts to saying: well, it was 40 years ago...the girls were teenagers, not too young...they weren't the worst kind of sexual offences etc.

"He hasn't warned BBC1 about the story, so they're beavering away on the special, oblivious."

The email throws Mr Rippon's future further into doubt after he stepped aside from his postl, but the final sentence of the email could prove crucial in the row over whether pressure was applied on Mr Rippon from above to drop the investigation.

Senior managers are likely to seize on the fact that Ms MacKean was telling her friend her belief that Mr Rippon had gone "lukewarm" on the story while BBC1 heads preparing tribute programmes to Savile were still "oblivious" to the Newsnight probe.

The BBC declined to comment on the leaked email.

It came as Baroness Neville-Jones, the former security minister who was a governor at the BBC between 1998 and 2004, said she did not believe there was a cover-up at the Corporation over the Savile affair, but something 'just as damaging' - that the story wasn't taken seriously.

Last night, a Panorama programme about the cancelled Newsnight investigation into Savile broadcast told of the devastation of victims who gave interviews about the abuse they had suffered, only to be told that their allegations would not be aired.

Lady Neville-Jones told the BBC Radio Four Today programme that after watching the Panorama report, she believed that senior executives at the Corporation were not interested in the victims' stories.

She went on: "What that programme told me, was not so much that there was really a cover-up ... I don't actually think it was that. I think it was something that is just as damaging in a sense, which is that it wasn't regarded as important.

"I don't believe the cover-up thesis. I'm not trying to suggest that this isn't damaging or that it is comparable, absolutely not.

"You cover up something that you regard as really damaging, very significant. I don't believe it was given that degree of importance, I don't believe it rated, and therefore it wasn't necessary to have a great big cover-up."

Peter Rippon, the editor of Newsnight, has stepped aside from his role after giving apparently inaccurate information about why the investigation was cancelled. He had originally suggested that the programme was focused on a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) not to proceed with a prosecution against Savile, a claim that his own reporters rejected.

Lady Neville-Jones said: "I think the CPS was probably regarded as some benchmark of whether this was actually significant and important, and we need to know why the CPS didn't actually proceed with a prosecution about cases of which it had become aware."

John Whittingdale, the chairman of the Culture committee, said that Mr Entwistle would need to deal with public concerns about Savile "very quickly".

He told BBC News: "he director-general may well say to us that he needs to wait until the investigations and inquiries have been completed.

"But I think on the other hand he also recognises that he has to deal with some of these concerns very quickly because the BBC is being damaged very badly by the stream of revelations and by the apparent mishandling of them.

"So it's very important for him that he begins to reassure the public on these points very rapidly."